By way of cartography, with respect to this book’s subtitle –
‘contexts, controversies and the future’ – this work is mapped
thematically rather than chronologically. This book does not begin
with ‘contexts’ for open access and the humanities, then move to
‘controversies’ and end with ‘the future’, but rather weaves these
elements throughout its investigations. To this end, the remainder of
this chapter is devoted to terminological basics; to unpacking the
history of the Open Access movement; to addressing the problems of
and potential lessons from the genesis of open access in the scientific
field; and to exploring the objections from various stakeholders in
outline. The first two of these areas may be superfluous to those
already familiar with the basics of open access, while the latter two
may present fresh angles for those coming with a scientific
perspective.
Because any transition to open access must necessarily interact with the value systems of the academy and its publishing mechanisms, the second chapter unpacks the economics of scholarly publishing in the two interlinked senses of an ‘economy’ of academic prestige and of finance. Beginning with the ways in which ideas of academic symbolic capital (‘prestige’) intersect with real-world pricing, this chapter also examines the commodity form of research work; the contexts of humanities scholarship; and the rhetoric of ‘crisis’ that pervades these disciplines. Concluding that there are, paradoxically, both supply-side and demand-side ‘crises’ affecting scholarly publishing (itself a heterogeneous term with a great deal of international variance in practice), the chapter ends with an examination of the different economic models that have been proposed for OA in the humanities. This chapter will hold value for librarians, funders and researchers but also to anybody more broadly interested in the economics that shape the research activities of the humanities disciplines.
The third chapter focuses on the contentious issue of open licensing, explored most thoroughly through the Creative Commons licenses.8 This chapter gives a historical background to open licensing and copyright before describing the reasons why it might be needed and the objections that have been mounted. There are also some observations, in this chapter, on the differing political rationales for desiring open licensing and the ways in which these merge with
